Primaries, State and Local Elections

PRIMARIESARETHE method by which voters nominate party candidates. In the United States, primaries are used at federal, state, and local levels. Before the advent of the direct primary, the standard method of nomination in the United States was through party conventions. In many states, each township or district elected delegates to the county convention, where delegates for congressional and state conventions were then selected. At each of these stages, delegates negotiated, bargained, and voted to make nominations. Often, the first level of this layered process, the township or district meetings, were called primary elections, or primaries. For this reason, when the nomination of candidates by popular vote was introduced, the method was referred to as a direct primary to distinguish it from the local meetings held under the convention method.

The statewide application of primaries for most elected offices, except the U.S. presidency, was imposed on political parties by legislatures in many states during the Progressive era. This was done to nullify the political clout corrupt party machines exerted under the convention method. Revisionists, however, argue that urban middle-class reformers intended to take back political power from lower-class immigrants who were mobilized by party bosses. Recent studies suggest that the emergence of increasingly aggressive candidates and the necessity of institutionalization in response to societal urbanization may have induced the political parties to initiate this reform. One important historical fact those making these arguments neglect, is that nominating by the direct primary system was initially adopted by county party organizations. The oldest known case was the Democratic party of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1842. The method was eventually referred to as the Crawford County system, and was adopted at the county level in more than 25 states by the early 20th century.

Primaries, regulated by state laws in most cases, and are diverse, but can typically be categorized into four types: open, closed, non-partisan, and blanket. Eleven states have an open primary system in which voters can choose their party after they enter the voting booth (thus called a pick-a-party primary). No party registration is needed, but voters may only vote for candidates from the same party for all offices. Eleven mostly southern states utilize a variation of the open primary, called a semi-open primary, in which voters do not have to register with a party in advance, but have to declare openly at the polls in which party's primary they wish to vote.

Fourteen states use a closed primary, in which voters must be registered with a party in advance to vote in its primary. Also, 14 states employ a semi-closed primary, in which voters are permitted to register or change party affiliation on Election Day, or unaffiliated Independent voters are allowed to participate in partisan primaries. Florida has a closed primary system, allowing all qualified voters, regardless of party affiliation to participate in a partisan primary if no candidate from another party is running for the office (called a universal primary). Louisiana has a unique non-partisan primary, in which all candidates for an office are listed on the same ballot with their party affiliation appearing after their names. If a candidate receives a majority of votes cast in the primary, he or she is elected to the office with no general [Page 672]election to follow. Otherwise, the top two finishers of the primary, even if they are from the same party, proceed to the general election.

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